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Stop Online Piracy Act

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is a United States bill introduced by U.S. Representative Lamar S. Smith (R-TX) to expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods. Provisions include the requesting of court orders to bar advertising networks and payment facilities from conducting business with infringing websites, and search engines from linking to the websites, and court orders requiring Internet service providers to block access to the websites. The law would expand existing criminal laws to include unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content, imposing a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

Proponents of the legislation state it will protect the intellectual-property market and corresponding industry, jobs and revenue, and is necessary to bolster enforcement of copyright laws, especially against foreign-owned and operated websites. Claiming flaws in present laws that do not cover foreign-owned...

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Internet advocacy groups have launched an online "Stop Cyber Spying Week of Action" to raise awareness of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) and other cybersecurity bills which they believe pose a dire threat to the privacy and...

The U.S. House Intelligence Committee has released a new draft of the Cybersecurity Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), narrowing the definition of "cybersecurity threat" in response to alarms being sounded throughout the technology comm...

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) has plenty of people in the tech community worried that it's going to be the next Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). The bill's authors flatly deny the charge, saying it's focused on cybersecurity...

The sponsors of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), a new cybersecurity bill in the House, assured a group of technology journalists and bloggers during a Tuesday morning conference call that their legislation has nothing to do...

Netflix has a new feature: Instantly streaming thousands of dollars to lobbyists and candidates through a Political Action Committee. The company has formed a committee named FLIXPAC, according to Politico. Put simply, a PAC is an organization that l...

A bill introduced to the House of Representatives late last year could become the centerpiece of the next SOPA-style struggle between the tech community and Washington, D.C. The bill already has over 100 co-sponsors and the backing of some of Silicon...

Is the fight over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) over? Not even close, according to Internet law expert Lawrence Lessig. Lessig is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School and director of the Edmond J. Safra Center f...

A group of Reddit users think that Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX.), author of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), has got to go -- and they've formed a Political Action Committee, or PAC, to give him the boot. TestPAC was first formed in January in the after...

A White House annual report on Intellectual Property reaffirmed President Obama's stance on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA): American intellectual property needs to be protected, but SOPA was too broad a bill. This new report indicates that the Whi...

Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, describes himself as an "Internet defender." When the technology community rallied together in opposition of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOP...

Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit, has a message for Texas Rep. Lamar Smith, author of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA): "Don't Mess With the Internet." And because everything's bigger in Texas, Ohanian wants to put that message on a giant billbo...

California's Rep. Darrell Issa, self-proclaimed "Internet defender," held a live interview with Reddit users on Thursday known as an "AMA," or "Ask Me Anything." The Republican congressman was challenged on digital piracy, his idea for a SOPA alterna...

In the wake of recent revelations about commercial appropriation of consumers' online data, the Obama Administration has stepped in with a "Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights" relating to online data. The proposal, unveiled Thursday, is designed to give...

Redditors are well known for posting memes, self-referencing jokes and collecting upvotes and karma. But writing legislation to protect the Internet? That's something new, and it's happening at "r/fia," a Reddit community that's writing the Free Inte...

Remember SOPA? Remember the urgency with which the bill's backers were trying to convince us that its intended target, online piracy, was a clear and present danger? Remember how those dastardly BitTorrenters were going to deprive us of a functioning...

Europeans against Internet censorship staged mass protests across the continent on Saturday. They also took their opposition to Twitter in the latest example of a grassroots movement spanning the physical and digital worlds. Opponents of the global A...

Protests against Internet censorship will blanket Europe this weekend, while Germany and Latvia announced Friday they would put the brakes on signing a copyright treaty that has sparked controversy across the continent. More than 200,000 people have ...

Mashable's Davos coverage is presented by BMW i, a new concept dedicated to providing mobility solutions for the urban environment. Our final day at Davos found the Mashable team standing feet away from black-clad riot police, a row of armored vans b...

President Barack Obama called for the protection of intellectual property rights in a Google+ hangout Monday evening, but said such protection must be done "in a way that's consistent with Internet freedom." Obama was replying to a question submitted...

In case you're still unclear about the U.S. Congress's hapless SOPA legislation that went down in flames earlier this month, the Matador Network sums it up neatly with this angry infographic. Once you've read this infographic about SOPA, you might be...

The technology community came out in force against SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) before those two bills were shelved last week. With them gone, we can expect tech experts and Internet users to step away from politics. The ba...

Of course the public is going to pirate music when 80% of our search results for music direct us to illegal sites. That's the claim made by a coalition of entertainment industry groups in a private document sent to the U.K. government. In the paper, ...

Most member states of the European Union have signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) at a ceremony in Tokyo, Japan on Thursday, Jan. 26. ACTA is a global treaty that tries to normalize copyright protection and IP standards. It's simila...

SOPA and PIPA are stalled (or dead) in the halls of the U.S. Congress. Yet, there may be a bigger, perhaps more dangerous threat to Internet freedoms on the way, called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA. At least that's how U.S. Rep. D...

Today at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Mashable’s Pete Cashmore will moderate a panel with leaders who have taken an active role in the debate on the now stalled Stop Online Piracy Act. He will talk with: Congressman Darrell Issa, U...

After widespread online protests that saw several sites including Wikipedia go dark, the U.S. House of Representatives effectively killed the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) last week. But the spirit of SOPA lives on in a bill before the Canadian Parli...

As further evidence of Reddit's red-hot growth, the news aggregation site had 100,000 unique visitors at one time on Monday, breaking a previous record. The figure, provided by Google Analytics at 1:43 p.m. ET on Monday, didn't come from a particular...

Facebook Inc. contributed $1.35 million to lobby various tech-related efforts last year, breaking the $1 million mark for the first time. During the last quarter of 2011, Facebook donated $440,000, targeting issues including international regulation ...

The founder of file-sharing site Megaupload -- which was shut down last Friday after the New Zealand police raided the man's home at the request of the U.S. FBI -- is still in custody Monday after a judge said he would decide by Wednesday whether or ...

Ladies and gentleman, bid farewell to the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act. They're both being tabled and sent to legislative limbo. How did that happen when just a few days ago it seemed like debates about the bills only existed online?...

Ding, dong, the bill is dead -- or at the very least buried, even if it may well rise again in another form in a year or so. Regardless, the withdrawal of the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act and the tabling of PIPA (its equivalent in the Senate)...

The raid and subsequent shutdown of file-sharing service Megaupload not only hacked off members of Anonymous, it also underscores one of the inherent vulnerabilities in storing data in the cloud. Beyond just providing easy TV access to college studen...

The Internet rejoiced Friday after Rep. Lamar Smith (R.-Texas) said that he would indefinitely pull the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) from consideration "until there is wider agreement on a solution." Smith's announcement came two days after a web-wi...

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